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Posts Tagged ‘Tooned News’

So this is based on an article I recently read about a 3D printing company that got into hot water for making guns! You heard that right! They’re printing guns! Now, this may seem a little “Star Treky”, but the technology is here and it’s getting better every day. First it was with simple plastics, but as time progresses, more durable materials like harder plastics or even metals will be used to make whatever you want.

The idea behind this project is actually quite amazing. They wanted something sort of a “wiki” or “database” to just upload designs to and allow members to download an item to print at home. Fully functioning. Just imagine the implications of this. Well, beyond the obvious “every idiot can now just make a gun” one. Because it means we’ll have absolute freedom to create anything and everything we desired, as long as we have a design code, a printer, and raw materials. Think about it, you’d be able to print anything from computers to games to toys to well, guns and ammo… And the concept doesn’t stop there. I’ve seen work being done with “chemistry printers”, that mix a few basic elements to create complex chemicals. This was more for the pharmaceuticals so you could just print up some Advil when you have a headache. Beyond that, when the tech improves, we may even construct organisms like cells or bacteria and I can’t imagine we’d stop there.

Then there’s the other side to that… See, we as a species are totally stupid. For all the imaginative and amazing creations we come up with, we find ways of using those creations to kill eachother off. So, these printers will see immediate abuse in making weaponry, piracy, and illegal drugs. I mean, how the heck would you stop this? All you’d need to do is download the blueprints. The printers do the rest of the work. And who will regulate what gets downloaded or printed? The government? Right, because they do such a great job with all those movies and games on Pirate Bay already… Point is, this is a wild new territory that we’ve entered; there is absolutely zero legislation to regulate the “printing” of items. Which brings us around to the point of this article, which is… well… who and how do we approach this type of thing? The company in the article got nipped in the bud from the printer manufacture’s end by revoking their lease agreement, but that’s not going to work when these things go mainstream. Which, of course, will happen.

So you can see the problem here. While there are regulations against just smithing a gun outright, what regulates the print of it? And if it falls under that ATF jurisdiction, how will they monitor and control, say, millions of printing machines? And who’s going to stop pirates from just printing up a few Skylanders or a nice new iPhone? Or drugs? Answer… they’re not going to be able to control it. This will rapidly get out of control and probably result in some MAJOR reworkings of how consumers purchase items or what consumers will have access to.

See, all of this is what they were talking about when they said most “type 1″ civilizations don’t make it for very long. Meaning, trying to transition to a “Star Trek” esque civilization will be the greatest challenge our species will ever face. Seems a bit grandiose, but it’s true. The problem is that people will have access to technology so powerful that it could easily destroy us all. That’s the problem. It’s not like just printing up a few MLP action figures will cause the world to end, rather having the power to print up a nuke or deadly disease or destroy the consumerist driven economy… You can see things escalated a bit quick, but there are issues here that we’ve never had to deal with before and will be at our doorstep sooner than we think. Personally, I think it’ll just even itself out and people will complain about it until the end of time… just like with every other bit of technology we have. But a cool outcome would be something like a Star Trek system where you get paid in some sort of credit that you purchase things in the replicators with. So the prices become fixed and have a massively stable economy. It also mean it will be heavily regulated and watched, kind of like those postage printers. There may even be limits built into the machines as to what is printable and what is not.

In any case… this is all very exciting! Sure there’s going to be abuse of the system, but just imagine all the great things that can come of this type of technology! Though I’m sure the folks at Steam will find a way to integrate it into their DRM… >)

(Ps… for those of you that don’t have printers… or at least the old ones, some make you buy a new color cartridge if you run out of just one color! And they’re expensive! And it’s always cyan it seems… the color that you’d think is used the least… freakin’ cyan!)

Can someone please fill me in here? In the last decade, it seems that the civil liberties of the people of this country have been in constant bombardment from the government and corporations! I’m sure we can all think of a few good reasons why, but that’s another debate. What I really want to talk about today is what constitutes as a civil right, something personal and private, when it relates to the internet. We all know that the internet isn’t private, however there, in theory, should be some sort of reasonable sense of separation from your personal online habits and the interests of groups such as the government, companies, and other third parties.

So what got me all sparked up by this was a recent court verdict that made use of Facebook “liking” grounds for dismissal from your job or any other organization AND the act of liking not subject to the First Amendment. Liking, for those who don’t use social media, is just clicking the little “Like” buttons on most websites, including mine (HINT), and links that somehow to your personal Facebook page. At the face value, it’s pretty harmless. It’s like favoriting(?) or bookmarking a webpage or article, but linking it publicly to yourself. Really now, it’s just another social media thingy that people are into, but at the end of the day, it’s fairly pointless and doesn’t mean anything. BUT, some jerkwad Sherif decided to fire his employees when he found out that they “liked” through Facebook his opponent during an election. One thing led to another, yada yada yada, and the courts decided that this was fine. Nope, totally not discrimination at all. Even though it is.

Besides finding out how terrible our legal system is set up, what have we learned from this? Well, we have already heard that anything you post, comment, or blog about online can be used against you by a company or organization if it deems it conflicting with their values. So if you say “Company X sucks” on your blog, they can take legal action. If you say “Company X sucks” and you work for them, you can be fired! If you say “Company Y is awesome” and you work for Company X, then you can be fired! Hell, they have gone so far as to request (legally) you Facebook login and password when applying for jobs (and universities). To some, this is a grossly obvious miscarriage of the Constitution. Which, as you know, it is. The First Amendment protects your right to free speech. Sure, there’s some things you can’t say, but those things are very few and far between. The spirit of the amendment was to protect your ability to speak your mind freely and without backlash. While we can argue that it was a bit narrower, meaning you won’t go to jail for spouting off, and while it won’t protect you from getting the cold shoulder from your friends and neighbors, it stands to reason that it would also extend far enough to protect your civil rights in the workforce as well. Even beyond that, you shouldn’t lose your medical insurance if you “Like” holistic medicine. But for right now, it looks like what happens in the hours surrounding 9 to 5, anything and everything you do can get your fired.

Officially, from the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, you can’t discriminate against ” race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (unless advertised upfront, then they can be all kinds of bigots). With a further case law and whatnot prohibiting discrimination based on pregnancy, political affiliation, language, citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status. But that STILL leaves a lot of room for companies to discriminate against you. Heck, in some jurisdictions, they can fire or not hire you because of your height or weight. So stuff like hair color, tattoos, the music you like, favorite color, or any of the hundreds of other stupid reasons people use to perpetuate hate against their fellow man are still available as ammunition for the firing squad.

My point is this… A company has 0 (zero, zed, nada, nothing) rights to discriminate against anything more than how productive you are. Obviously if you don’t do your job then out you go. But if you are in any way different, then logically there’s no reason for all this angst! Really now! What does it matter if I have a mutton chops? If I do the same work as someone sans-mutton then what’s the difference? Besides me looking much cooler…

Back to the original topic though… The internet is probably the single most significant creation of the last, well, ever. It has brought the collective knowledge of the whole of humanity in one place, breaking the bonds of classes, and spreading instantaneous communications between the people of every nation. But with that, we have to take the good and the bad. As it is now, the internet is something of a wild west. The intent and the use are two different things and I guess we need to start clarifying how we plan to regulate and enforce things like civil rights. Because anonymity is pretty much just a facade, we must consider the consequences of our actions and fight for our rights. Above all other things, we HAVE to uphold the First Amendment. It is #1 on the list for a reason. The ability to speak one’s own mind without recourse (besides getting called out for BS or trolled) is the absolute foundation of our most basic human rights. It is the expression of our individuality and it can NOT be used in any shape or form as a means for discrimination. I personally believe that every one of us has a voice and should be able to speak our minds. Sure, there are certain times and places where this may not be appropriate (like, I keep my site mostly friendly, so anything really mean, especially towards yours truly, gets permabanned) but on the level of law and employment, there is absolutely no reason for the things you do or believe in on a personal and public level to be used against you. That means, firing you because you “like” Wallmarts when you work at Target should not get you fired. It is discrimination based on your personal preferences and despite the conflict in interest, as long as you are performing your job at an acceptable level, then there’s no reason for any of these shenanigans!

On the other hand, what if someone was working at a daycare center and Facebook “likes” NAMBLA? Think I might have to play my hypocritical trap card with that one cause I probably wouldn’t be ok with it. But this isn’t about me… I can be contradictory. >)

Oh, and if the lawyers of that Facebook case are reading this, then you should really play the “can’t discriminate against political affiliation” card because even though it’s not, apparently, a First Amendment issue, I’d wager my lunch money that you can get them on a Civil Rights violation. It’s ok if you didn’t think of it. You can send me a 10% consultation fee… XD

Sometimes in life people do dumb things; things that are for reasons beyond logic or understanding. Some folks claim it’s because of how they were raised, some say it’s genetic, and then some say it’s because outside influences like, oh say, video games.

I’ve talked about this in depth before, how the interactive media genre is a very new and because of that, it tends to get a bad rep when people do things outside of the realm of sanity. It’s easy to blame things. In fact, it’s hardwired into our very nature to try to come up with elaborate explanations for the mysteries around us. Just look at a lot of folklores and religions and even early sciences. There’s just this little part of us that wants an answer for something that isn’t right. Many times, this manifests into crazy stories so fantastic they must be true! Just look at the whole of history and the wonders of the cosmos. We puny little humans have been struggling with our insignificance place in the universe for as long as we’ve had brains, and everything from gods to giant space spiders have been thought up to explain the whole of existence. So when seemingly rational people go out of their way to kill and murder their own kind, it not only disgusts us but confuses us. We can understand some things, like war or crimes of passion, but when an ordinary looking person just loses his senses to madness… we look for an explanation… we NEED an explanation. We start manufacturing stories to help rationalize these heinous actions of one of our own. “Something must have happened in his life,” they say in a vain attempt to understand. That’s when the blame train rolls into the station. See, as wonderful as we human folks are, we often seek the easiest explanation… which unfortunately ends up being the blame game. It’s easy to blame other people or factors for our misdeeds. A guy goes off on a murderous spree? Obviously it was the video games he played! And that’s where we are now…

Anders Breivik, if you didn’t know, is that Norwegian guy that went on a little mental vacation and murdered 77 people last year. That’s almost impossible to comprehend! Worse yet, the initial reports I read about this incident were not about how shocked people were that so many people died, rather that someone who looked like this guy could do such a thing. For whatever reason, we can wrap our brains around death and not around the killer. If you look at pictures of the guy, other than looking like a bit of an @$$, he’s seemingly unremarkable. This guy could be your neighbor or someone you hang out with for flag football. And I think that’s what makes people want an external factor to be the cause of his breakdown even more. It’s because we don’t want our normal Joe Everybody from Anytown USA to be some kind of mass murderer. It hurts our brains to think that something safe or ordinary in our eye is really dangerous, and thus, it’s something else causing the problem. Which is why, with this whole incident, our old goat friend, video games, came back into the limelight. Apparently this gentleman played quite a bit of Call of Duty, a shooting game, before going out and using a real gun on real people. He claimed that he used this game as practice to “hone his skills” in preparation for his slaughter. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the game caused his violence. In fact, many people get a release of aggression when playing games like these (except when they’re getting pwened by me! ooooooh). But the point is, the chicken came second here; the game was not responsible for making him kill people, he just decided to use this in a way beyond its original intent.

And then it came out that he played WoW. He played a LOT of wow! Like 16hrs a day a lot. (well ok, that’s not so bad… lol!) Which raised many eyebrows and, of course, became another scape goat for his anger and aggression. But to our rescue he came! Swooping down like some sort of super hero, this obvious gleaming man of impeccable honor and duty to his fellow man, set the record straight! World of Warcraft did NOT influence him and his hatefilled ways at all! Aaaaand now I’m pissed! You sir are NOT a spokesman for our cause. You are the instigator for the entire media frenzy and it’s bloodthirst for the eradication of videogame violence and even the medium as a whole. By making such proclamations publicly, all you do is bring attention and focus to it. It’s like standing in front of a graffiti’d wall and telling the cop you didn’t do it as the officer walks by. Yeah, see how far that will get you! Sheesh!

So comeon! He is nothing more than a sociopath. Nothing more, nothing less. His brain is wired wrong. Games, movies, music, writings… all these effect him differently, causing him to seeth with hate. And beyond that, anything will do this to him. It’s not any one medium’s fault. It has nothing to do with media at all. Saying videogames made him into a murderer is like saying the number two causes clouds to rain. It’s pure absurdity! They are completely uncorrelated events and thus, not connected in any way. A normally functioning person doesn’t become a killer because of books or music or games. An emotionally disturbed person just might. And that’s not even saying having bad wiring causes bad things. Sure, it makes it more difficult and you probably need to seek counseling if you find pleasure in putting cats into blenders or watching an action movie gives you ideas rather than a brief bit of entertainment… but it’s a choice thing. People aren’t the sum of their programming. We have choice beyond our function. (back to my droids thing I guess) And ultimately, as much as we hate to just admit it, the blame falls solely upon us, the individual, for our actions. It is up to us what we do. And no amount of conditioning, genetics, or circumstance can stake claim for what we do. So the point still stands, Occam’s Razor, the answer was simple and staring us in the face the entire time… The guy’s an idiot. A sociopathic idiot. And as much as you try to bend the idea of outside influence to explain his actions, at the end of the day, it’s just him, an idiot, a sociopath, a guy who didn’t control his actions… not couldn’t.

Man I hope this makes sense… Anyways, I’ve tried all the different operating systems (main ones anyways) and once upon a time I was a Mac only dude. And I like the Mac OS. It’s not bad for what it is and I think it tends to get a bad rap. Sure, it might not be the best for games but man it could run some image software and video editing like a pro! And it also had great security…

But that was one of the things that bothered me so much about Apple products (and Linux as well); they always have this air of superiority and boasting that they are very secure and devoid of any viruses or malware. They, Mac and Linux, don’t even have any active antivirus programs (there are some responsive ones for scanning, but meh) to protect your computer. Actually, that has bugged me forever! Especially for platforms like Linux, where they have “Live CDs” that you can boot up a premade OS to run on any computer for free! It’s an awesome product with one massive flaw… The best possible use of this is on infected computers that you can run the live cd on to gain access to your hard drive… AND THEN run a virus scanner to remove them– oh wait, you can’t do that! Finding a proper antivirus for linux is like finding a proper game for mac (ooooooooooh)! A majorly disappointing fail with the available software.

Anyways, here’s the news story… Last week more than 600,000 Mac computers (which is like 100% of them, bazing!) were infected with a trojan virus (the FlashBack virus) through a Java loophole with the intent to steal usernames and passwords for banking sites and whatnot. It’s a pretty amazing feat to take the mighty Mac down off it’s pedestal. I hate to see it happen, but maybe it should have. What I’m saying is, it might be the wakeup call Mac users have needed to finally start securing up their machines! As it stands, the only system for monitoring and fixing computers is through responsive means from the company or poorly tuned 3rd party software. So you’ll have to wait for an official fix and patch. What needs to happen is on the major anti-virus companies as well, like Avast/AVG/etc need linux and mac versions as well! And that will come with demand, which I hope, this experience will provide.

Sorry folks, but there’s no such thing as absolute security or immunity… So you need to use protection! >)

So the CDC (Center For Disease Control) released another community bulletin about how to deal with the problems facing us today, like zombies or giant global disasters. This time is the topic of dealing with space invaders! Now, some might say it’s a bit unusual or just a waste of time for our governmental bodies to be making procedures for epidemics localized only to your favorite “B”-movie, but I disagree! Having preparedness for anything and everything is essential to the future survival of the Human race. Now I’m not talking about stocking up on a 10 year supply of baked beans and tin foil hats that you keep in your nuclear bunker you made in your closet… No, I’m talking about sets of helpful tips for the general public to access before, during, and after any kind of threatening event. It’s good to know what to do so that you can calmly and collectedly deal with any situation without panicking and possibly causing even more problems. I know those pre-flight tutorials we all hate sitting through are redundant at best, but I bet that any one of you can tell me the proper process should there be a sudden loss of cabin pressure!! Stuff like that seems second nature to us, and it should! In that instance you would know how to keep safe.

So when we start rolling through some of the less probable events, they seem trivial or just laughable to us, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Now, I said “probable” for a reason. We don’t know if we are alone in the universe, but depending on how you look at the Drake equation, we could be in a world of hurt if we are not prepared for meeting up with an extra-terrestrial species. My only concern here with this report from the CDC as opposed to the zombie invasion one, is that it seems less serious than the previously mentioned. It basically tells us to just roll over and let them have at it, and on the surface, that’s just bad advice.

Here’s the issue here, supposing we meet up with some alien race in the near future, the general public will completely lose their minds! Without some sort of unified plan, I’m sure the majority of us would reach for our shotguns and start wildly firing into the air. Lord help us if there’s a sci-fi con happening at the same time… poor poor cosplayers… but they knew the risks. Anyways, surely there would be an excess of panic. I’d say the best procedure would be to stay indoors, watch the news, and to make sure everybody knows to stay calm and not act out. It could be a whole diplomatic mess if people started getting involved. On the other hand, it’s also not a bad idea for people to know how to properly defend themselves and survive without provisions. It would also probably align well with how to deal with modern day wartime invasionary procedures, like readiness for biological, radioactive, or chemical attacks; though the biggest threat would be via biological and that’s where the CDC can really shine.

But you know, maybe there is something to the whimsical nature of the CDC’s response to this issue, in that when faced with a threat from an alien species, throwing in the towel is probably the best and only option given our current state of technology. Yeah, we’ve come a long way from throwing twigs, rocks, and other more primitive biological weapons, but if we’re up against a race that has the technology to close the gaps between stars, well, we’re pretty screwed. I’m sure a few of us could survive much of anything, but I think Michio Ikaku said it best when talking about fighting aliens, “it’s not like most would think, a David vs Goliath situation like in the movies, rather it would be Bambi vs Godzilla” ~paraphrased. This disparity between technology would most likely be absolutely immense and any attempt to rebel directly would most definitely end poorly. Though I did see a program that made a very interesting point, if we were faced with such an encounter then guerrilla tactics would be the best. That is to say, it’s not a mission to win the war through brute force, rather win by default by making it nearly impossible for the other side to make any progress. As in, be a pain in the butt as much as possible so it just because so uneconomically feasible that they just give up. So… that’s my plan! Punking aliens until they leave. >)

Ok, I’m not really one to rag on everyone’s religion, that’s their choice and whatnot, but some are just… how can I put this delicately… stupid! And Kopimism is right up there!

Let me explain… Kopimism is a “religion” that was recently recognized, officially, by the Swedish government. It holds information as holy and the act of copying a holy act. That’s… about it right there. No matter how much polish you try to put on it, this turd is still about the illegal download and distribution of copyrighted media. The only thing different they’re doing, than say Pirate Bay or some download club, is that they decided to be an affront to all real religions. Sure, I’m sure we can get into arguments about that, but the nitty gritty about this is that a group of people want to download their mp3s and they figured they can skirt the law by saying they are protected by freedom of religious expression. Of course, you still can’t break the law… I mean, you can’t have human sacrifices; still against the law, fyi.

I guess the real question here is not only should they have been allowed to get this far with things, but is there such a huge underlying problem to guide people to behave this way? Here’s the entire piracy argument in a nutshell…

On the one hand, you have people who make stuff, like actors, producers, camera people, sound people, writers, etc… They all have jobs and want to be paid. Had the digital age not happened, and assuming you couldn’t just duplicate commercial products like with vhs, then the equivalent would be walking out of a store with a stack of dvds under your coat. That, of course, would be theivery and such.

On the other… This isn’t the same kind of copyright violations as say someone making a Mickey Mouse cartoon without consent of Disney. And supporters say it’s also not a crime of theft. No physical goods have been absconded with and then there’s the kicker; no money has been lost. That’s the big problem there, since all of the movie/music/game industries have claimed they’ve lost money, but when you ask those who download, many will say if there were no other means, then they would not have purchased the media in the first place. So, nothing has been lost since it was never a potential purchase.

Both sides have good points and while you have many new rules, regulations, and borderline unethical attempts to circumvent piracy on the media itself, at least we have had so many great and inspirational ideas spring from the whole thing. Look at stuff like how bittorrent works and how most of your games now update and install using that technology. Or the compression standards we use for disk media that was used to compress movies to fit on cds. Or even the MP3! Yeah, sure, maybe they weren’t all originally intended for piracy, but because they became so widespread and popular, they’ve transitioned better to commercial media. Heck, just look at Microsoft! Even Bill Gates stated that piracy of their software has aided their market penetration and, in the end, given it a larger market share had it not been distributed. And just look at Steam, a company that seems to have a great handle on the distribution of its products, and dangit, I just love Steam!

So with 2012 around the corner, I figured I’d make a nice little comic to help put your minds to ease. One of the things the doomsayers are spouting is that the sun will send out flares that’ll wipe us all out from existence. Ok, “yes” this year will be the start of some heavy solar activity, but the sun goes in cycles of low and heavy activity. It’s been doing it for years… And we’re all still here, mostly. The issue is this; if the sun gets good and wound up, it could toss out a really big flare that could be bad times for us. This happened once before in world history, here in the US if I’m not mistaken, when we were hit by a big flare of supercharged particles causing a major magnetic pulse resulting in some of the communications infrastructure getting fried… granted, that was telegraphs and what not, but there were still reports of people getting shocks from working too close to them when it happened.

Problem is, we’ve got lots more fancy tech since then and the fear is that if we get one good well placed flare, it could send us back to the middle ages. While this is true, we’re also not complete idiots. (emphasis on the “complete” part) A lot of the delicate stuff in space, like satellites and whatnot have some protection from solar activity and when you look at the big picture, it’d be a pretty hard to hit a tiny blue ball in the vastness of the solar system.

Regardless of any of that, the big part of solar flares is the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that can fry stuff. But even if you, like me, don’t think we’d be lucky enough to have one hit us directly, there are some precautions you can take to keep all your xboxes and walkmans safe from damage!! It’s really quite simple actually!

To protect your valuable tech gears from an EMP, just set up a Faraday Cage!!
What is that you might ask? Well, it’s just some awesome science at work, that’s what! What you do is take some conductive metal like a steel mesh or even aluminum foil and wrap whatever you want to keep safe in it. Or just fill up an aluminum or steel cooking pot and secure the lid. Yeah… it’s just that simple! See, the electrons from the EMP get redistributed evenly across the outer surface and do NOT transfer to the inside. So, if you’re worried about your stuff, toss them in a cooking pot, set it and forget it! (generally speaking, fireproof safes aren’t good for this… but you can wrap the stuff inside with foil.

So there you go! You’re now 2012 proof! Though I guess there’s other things out there like solar plasma ejections that could just instantly vaporize us, but I wouldn’t worry about that since there’s pretty much nothing you can do and about no warning. Or I guess if the sun under-preforms it could lead to a mini ice age like the one a few hundred (?) years back. But there’s no use worrying about very slight probabilities.

Well folks, it looks like Hell has officially frozen over! Now, I like to lovingly pick on China a bit, but I’m actually pretty excited for them. Recently, the powers that be released a statement that they will be cracking down on pirated software, movies, music and knocked-off name brand products. This is huge! I mean, the joke is that China’s main export is bootleg dvds, but having an official policy to abolish it is an amazing step in the right direction! Maybe it’s because of foreign pressure or just the natural evolution of a nation, but it looks like a good move for the country. I guess this is just the beginning of a long line of political patches to hotfix some of the more prolific problems effecting many of the other countries (such as the ban on gold farming… err… attempted anyways).

So yeah, exciting stuff! Hopefully we can see some good coming out of this for all those IP holders who lose tons of money to pirating and counterfeiting. Then again, this might have some negative impacts due to the outlawing of the processes and thus, unemploying a potentially great number of people. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but if it all works out for the employees, then this will be a great move for the country in its growth and relation to it’s buddies. But I hope they don’t fix too many problems… gotta leave me a little something to make fun of! XD

Anyways guys, looks like another exciting sequel to the Grand Theft Auto series is upon us! Seems that we’re headed to “LA” this time. Got a very nice video of some action, though it’s all speculation as to who the main character will be. Which brings me to the theme of today’s comic. See so many of these games feature a “minority of the month” as the main character to be perpetrating all kinds of villainous antics, but this always bugged me a bit. Kind of seems like it portrays minorities in a bad light. Not a fan of that. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems a little prejudiced *stereotype-casted. (edited for better wording)

So why can’t we portray in these games the actual criminals. The people who’ve robbed America blind, then ask for hand outs because they might not get a bonus. That’s right, all them CEOs and banks are the real crooks, so I say we should have them be the main characters of GTA! It’d be more realistic if you had, the CEO of Bank of America or Enron or any of the other corporate thieves that have contributed to the decline of our financial structure.

That being said… I really hope this game is more SA-like than GTA4. I played the heck out of SA and yet couldn’t even get more than half way through 4. Not sure what they did exactly to ruin it, maybe it was the more linear gameplay and lack of a real SA style sandbox, but it just didn’t do it for me. That and I really couldn’t connect with the character. In SA, you could really see how Carl Johnson gets sucked into this life of crime and destruction… but not so much with Niko. For me at least. In any case, it looks just perdy and I’ll definitely be giving it a try!

Heh, ok… I love when I find these articles, you know, the ones where they make some major discovery that all of us already knew about. This last one was about a study on car color and heat. Seems that white/silver cars stay cooler in the sun than dark colored/black cars! I know, this is some crazy mind boggling quantum stuff, so if you can’t keep up, that’s understandable. LOL! But seriously, it never ceases to amaze me how much “proof of common sense” experiments there are (like my other favorite, chainmail is heavy).

I think that I actually love this sorta thing. It’s just science for the sake of science! Sure, we all know that getting hit with a bottle hurts, but how much? Do different kinds of bottles do more damage? What are the variables that effect it? Why not find this out? (and it seems the Mythbusters did a show on this!) So yeah, quantifying the actual processes of events that are common knowledge to us may sound mundane and ridiculous, but I think it gives us a little perspective and heck, it’s just fun! Science should be fun!

That and it’s kinda neat they actually figured out how MUCH of a difference there is between the two colors of car. Looks to be about an average of .44mpg (2%) and about 1.9% carbon dioxide emissions. So… White cars are good for the environment! Kinda…

Anyways, the argument I always hear that accompany these sorts of research studies is “humbug! Scientists should only work on cures for diseases and stuff”. Well, that research is important and all, but I think we tend to forget that there are a LOT of kinds of science out there. Think of it kind of like art, a sculptor might not be able to be a painter… two very different things, even though it’s all “art”. Same with science. Also, doing all these weird little side projects has a small chance for cross overs. There tends to be a lot of serendipitous works from the other fields when they bleed over, so who knows… maybe we’ll figure out this whole theory of everything thing if we study cooking eggs on sidewalks… idk… you know what I mean. >)

ALSO!!!I did a guest comic for the wonderful Kuo Comics! Check it out! It kind of ties into the storyline which can be seen from the start HERE… but you should know that… cause Jenn’s comic is so awesome you’re probably already reading it! >)

So there was this video of some researchers at the Tel Aviv University of this really cool science trick, it went up on Youtube, and, of course, the internet went bonkers over it! Almost 5 million views in about a week! Craziness! And the science community just finds this hilarious. Well, that is, because it’s a relatively simple trick that most of us have probably seen in our science classes (maybe now… I don’t remember getting to witness anything that awesome in class).

But yeah, guys, science is darn cool! Literally! See, this trick is pulled off by taking a material (in this case, a thin sapphire disk) that is coated with something (a ceramic layer of yttrium barium copper oxide) that when chilled with a splash of liquid nitrogen, makes it a superconductor. Now, normal magnets give off a field (probability field) that would ordinarily just pass right through the disk. But when it goes superconductor, it bends this field around it, allowing it to levitate! That’s called the Meissner Effect. Now, the real trick is to get Quantum Locking to work (and no, not those Weeping Angels from Dr.Who). That’s where it holds its place in 3 dimensions. How this works, is that because the special coating is so super thin, it has little imperfections, magnetic soft spots if you will, that create “flux tubes” allowing bits of that magnetic field to pass through and “lock” the object in place!

Neat trick huh? Of course… if we were to see the stuff that’s a little more advanced, we’d either have our minds blown apart by the wow or think it’s just a bunch of CG effects. >)

He stalks the nights, hunting down criminals tirelessly, thanklessly. But does he chase the villains, or run from his dark past?! He is Phoenix Jones, masked muscle man of justice! With his trusty powers of blinding toxins, he subdues the most vile of villainy. He’s also, presumably, able to fly and see through walls… Though I might just be making up that last part.

Anyways… uh. So this is mostly true. Benjamin John Francis Fodor, aka Phoenix Jones, was brought in for trying to break up a fight with pepper spray (which, apparently, can be called assault). He spent 7hrs in jail and was released on bail.

Apparently, he’s part of a Seattle vigilante justice group called the Rain City Superhero Movement. Wonder if they have a supervillain movement I could apply to… hmm… lol! (also, double points for his wife, aka, Purple Reign!)

I guess the thing here is that vigilante justice is frowned upon… and for good reason. You’re not trained in police work, you don’t represent “the people” as a law enforcement officer does, and there’s the whole “liability” thing. Also… Pepper spray? Really? Maybe if it was mounted in some dispenser on the wrist and can be shot like spidey web, but just a $5 can of pepper spray from Walmart? That’s just lazy. The man’s got some decent fighting/boxing records so do that. Or use your wits and subdue your dastardly evildoers with your cunning and agility! But not pepper spray… or a taser for that matter…

That said, I kinda like this movement! It’s like the Robin Hood of the modern era! Hmm, come to think of it, he did wear tights too… But yeah, I think it would be awesome in the sense that if there was some sort of certification to do it, or registration, or work similar to a bounty hunter or private detective… I think just grabbing a can of Human Off and an old Halloween costume isn’t the way to do it. Other than that… Man, I’m all for this!

“I am just like everybody else. The only difference is that I try to stop crime in my neighborhood and everywhere else.”, said Jones, and you know what, even though he was a bit out of line with his tactics, if there were just a few more people out there like him, trying to keep even just one street corner crime-free, then maybe our world might be just a little bit safer. (within reason and moderation… bam! nice save!)

Looks like Fox is doing it again! And the Simpsons are directly in the cross hairs!

So Fox is trying to renegotiate the salaries for the voice acting talent so that they take a 45% pay cut. This is because Fox claims the show isn’t making as much money as it once did and unless the actors take their cut, they won’t continue the series. Times are tough, I get it, but that’s quite a bit. Granted, many people might not have their heart strings tugged too much to know they get about $400k per episode, but still, as an artist, it’s good to see someone making a pretty penny off their craft.

But here’s where it gets interesting… Voice actor Harry Shearer (does lots of voices) fired back with a proposal to take even a 70% or more cut if the cast could get a small portion of future profits from the show. Of course Fox came back with a big NOOOOOOO… They basically said that no amount of salary cut could justify giving them a portion of profits. Cause, you know… it makes a LOT of money. Oodles!

I understand, really I do, they don’t want to share future profits because that could be a lot of money, but as someone who stands on the artist side of the wall, I also understand that a person should receive fair compensation for their craft.

(also, let me throw a shout out to my buds on the other side of the planet… sry to pick on China again, but I kinda like that character now, lol.)

It’s actually pretty amazing when you think about it… The folks at NASA provided data from the Kepler Space Telescope and transformed it into an interface that’s not overly evil to use for the general public. What they did was ask the global community to help sift through the data (visually) and point out patterns that indicate the existence of planets around stars. (Long story short, they look for blips in the reading of stars caused by, you guessed it, planets!) This has led to the discovery of 2 new planets that are “similar” to Earth (in what I assume are distance from the star and size of the planet).

All I can say is that this strategy is absolutely remarkable! Taking regular data and presenting it in a way that’s appetizing to the user is a great idea in “gamifying” ordinarily mundane, tedious, and expensive operations. And, in theory, you could do this with just about anything! Heck, they even did one where you fold proteins to help scientists understand how to combat AIDS-like viruses! I mean, it’s incredible! Using the ingenuity and power of the collective Human mind! It’s a lot like stringing a bunch of computers together to do network processing (or whatever its called). I can see a lot more of this in the years to come (if done right) where you might think you’re playing a harmless game of BeJeweled and it turns out you’ve just sequenced the cure for cancer.

Check out the Planet Hunters site to join the cause! Or help battle disease at Foldit and fold you some proteins!

Breaking News! Literally! Scientists believe they have now broken one of the most fundamental constants of the physics world; the speed of light!! Pretty neat!!

Hmm… something tells me this is a bit of a double jab… Anyways, so here’s the story… Scientists at CERN have been firing packets of Neutrinos (really tiny thingies that can go through stuff) at a research facility in Italy, over 730 km away, for the last 3 years and all the data suggests that these little itty bitty particles beat the pants off the poster child for speed, the photon, by 60 nanoseconds. Sure, it doesn’t seem like much, but that means these particles traveled 770,400 km/hr FASTER than light. That’s… a big difference. (the current speculation is that these were high energy neutrinos rather than ones of lower energy, which explains why these move faster than ones observed from a “recent” super nova explosion)

What does this mean for science? Well, you know that famous E=MCC (that’s C squared) thing? Well… you can kiss that goodbye. Jump up in your physics class when the teacher talks about relativity and yell out “OBJECTION”! All science books will be burned and rewritten! People will rejoice and riot in the streets– *AHEM* Ok ok, that’s overly dramatic, we’ve still been using the equation, especially in the experiments at CERN when trying to convert virtual field particles to real particles and seeing decent success. But it, more or less, means that the equation is incomplete or not as precise as we’d like to think. Also… it’ll probably undermine the whole of physics and our understanding of the quantum universe. It would put a lot of scientists to work for a while, since we’ll have to change all the books. Golly, it’s a great time to be alive! Such amazing science to be had!

But this all goes back to my “science is belief” thing. Even when all this came out, after 3 years of testing by very VERY smart peoples, and a six-sigma level of certainty (it’s a lot), we STILL have people who argue this with a passion. I mean, think about it… If one day you wake up, read the paper, and realize that everything you knew, everything you’ve been taught to be true and doctrine are claimed as false… it would be maddening! So there’s a lot of angst, resentment, passion, and denial of these findings. Kinda reminds me of that whole “universe doesn’t move around the Earth” thing. Like I’ve said before… the best thing we can do as a science community is to never hold a truth; rather, keep ideas that work and always try to improve or even disprove them. Like springboards… Cause no matter what we think we know now… it will all be laughable in the future.

As such, even these findings you have to consider as a stepping stone. We have the data, we’re trying to root out anything that could potentially be flaws in the logic, but as of right now, we can’t really find any. But that doesn’t mean it wont all turn out to be a function of some kind of quantum mechanic that we don’t know about… and even then, no matter how you look at this news, it still opens up a whole new realm of theories and suppositions and all that jive these sciency folk like to dabble in. Just… really great stuff man! Really great!